


Chasing Rabbits

by dragonartist5



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Long-Distance Relationship, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Time Travel, buckle up it's gonna be a wild ride, dustin's putting on a musical, el needs a hug, hopper's probably not dead, in this house we love alexei, like 10k ideas and a vague plot vibe but what else is new, mike's just trying to keep it together, my take on several season 4 theories, strange things are happening in hawkins (again), the adventures of antique chariot and wheelbarrow
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-06-29 02:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19821013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonartist5/pseuds/dragonartist5
Summary: In the wake of the battle at Starcourt and the Byers' flight from Hawkins, El struggles to find her footing in the midst of grief and uncertainty. Moving on, however, seems impossible when a mysterious dream and an unexpected visitor cause her to question everything she thought she knew. Meanwhile, Mike attempts to solve the case of a missing girl and grows suspicious of an investigator intent on uncovering the truth about Hawkins.





	1. Sweater Weather

El listened to the water lapping against the rickety, old fishing dock on which she sat, legs dangling off the edge, staring at her muddled reflection. The sound blended with the distant chords of some familiar song filtering out of the open window from Jonathan's stereo and an occasional, miffed honk uttered by a flock of geese resting on a nearby embankment. The chorus was punctured only by the faraway splash of a fish leaping from the water. El liked the calm. You couldn't call it quiet, but it was _serene_ , a good word, a word for the still surface of the water, like glass, and soft, orange hue that stained the sky as the last rays of sunlight faded behind the surrounding hills.

She shivered, hugging the soft, cotton fabric of her hoodie—one of Mike's, blue, with a fading Hawkins Middle logo on the front—tighter to her body. Today marked the first of November, and the wind carried a promise of winter and the scent of dying things. Dying leaves, dying light.

El reached into the pocket of her jeans and withdrew a cigarette. She rolled it between her thumb and forefinger contemplatively before lighting it and placing it between her lips, taking a soft, quick drag. She lowered it from her lips and closed her eyes, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. She stole them from Joyce. One or two, here and there. She never seemed to notice, and what the hell, it felt good. It calmed her nerves, quieted her thoughts. It smelled like him, too. Hop. She slept in his shirts, buried her face in the fabric and breathed him in. The scent of cigarette smoke jogged a host of other memories, sensations of him that flickered like ghosts behind her eyelids and faded just as quickly. Calloused, sandpaper hands. The whisper of a stubbly jawline against her cheek and a deep, rumbling laugh. Jim Croce, Schlitz, maple syrup. It hurt, but it was a good kind of hurt. It was bitter-sweet. It lifted her up and just as easily dropped her, like the tides that rose and fell along California's coastline. Like the nicotine buzzing in her veins.

El stared across the lake at the lights from porches and windows as they flicked on, one by one. She flicked a bit of ash off the tip of her cigarette, watched the smoke curl gracefully from the end and dissipate in the twilight. A fish jumped, somewhere to her left. The bullfrog paused briefly in his song, then resumed. El flicked her cigarette into the water and rubbed her hands together, absently, fiddling with the Sarah's bracelet. A callous had begun to form over the pad of her thumb from the countless times she'd run it up and down the bracelet. A nervous tick, a habit, like how she'd started biting her nails. She squinted at her hands in the dying light, observing the ragged skin around her cuticles with a twinge of guilt. She rubbed her palms on her jeans and stood up, stiff from sitting for so long.

Up at the house, she pulled open the back door and crept inside. Joyce was banging around in the kitchen. Jonathan's stereo barked something fast and angry, a song she didn't recognize. El passed his room and went straight to hers at the end of the hall, closing the door. She stood in the center of the room, digging her toes into the carpet, pulling the sleeves of Mike's hoodie over her hands.

Her room was a bit larger than her old one back at the cabin. She'd hung her posters on the wall. One Mike had given her, which used to hang in his basement. A big, brightly colored Wonder Woman poster, which Max had given her as a going-away gift.

"There's more to life than stupid boys." Max had said with a half-hearted laugh, eyes glossy with unshed tears. She threw her arms around El. "Don't forget to call, okay?"

El nodded, returning the hug, tears stinging her eyes.

"I won't."

After she'd unpacked and found places for all her belongings, her radio and cassettes, her super com, her books, the room had begun to feel like home. Familiar, safe, and all her. Alongside her posters, she'd plastered drawings and mementos on the walls—a drawing Will had done of the whole party, featuring El as Mage, wearing long dark robes, looking fierce and beautiful and decidedly bitchin' and a Valentine's Day card from Mike, a photo of her and Hopper making funny faces at the camera in the light of summer. All of these things, these pieces of her life, made it a little easier to breathe. But there were still boxes to unpack, boxes she couldn't muster the courage to open. Ghosts she didn't care to disturb. They sat, silent and gathering dust, in the back of her closet. After Starcourt, after . . . Joyce told her that a lawyer had reviewed Hopper's will (a piece of paper that told the government what a person wanted to do with their belongings after they died, Joyce explained, gently. El made a mental note to ask what a lawyer was, later) and he'd left her everything.

"Me?" El asked, confused. Joyce nodded.

"Yes, sweetie. You're his daughter, and the closest family he's got. This is his way of looking out for you."

"Family." El had repeated, tasting the word, drawing it out. She looked at Joyce, tears welling in her eyes.

"Oh, honey." Joyce pulled her into a tight hug, then stepped back, holding her at arm's length. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind El's ear. "We'll go to the cabin and collect your belongings, when you're ready."

It was a little more than a month before El decided she wanted to return to the cabin. Joyce took the morning off to drive her. Mike had insisted on coming with her, but she'd refused his offer. This was something she needed to do alone. She'd been putting it off for so long, afraid of what she'd find there. Afraid of waking the ghosts.

El opened the door, listening to hinges groan from age and disuse. Light cut through the darkened room, illuminating the floorboards and scattered shards of glass. A layer of dust coated every surface. In the wake of the battle and everything that came after, Jonathan had gone to gather her things, the essentials—a change of clothes, a toothbrush. The rest had been left untouched.

El stepped inside, picking her way through the debris and broken glass. The shattered windows and holes in the walls, all the damage the cabin had suffered in its encounter with the Mind Flayer, had been haphazardly boarded up. The air smelled like rot, stale in the heat of summer, and she was pretty sure something had died under the floorboards, judging by the stench. A rat, maybe, or a possum. She shivered. Going into the kitchen, she took a vase full of dead flowers off the windowsill and threw them in the trash. She went outside and gathered a handful of wildflower stems, replacing the dead ones. El propped the door open to air out the place, swept the glass and dirt into a dustpan. She dug a screwdriver out of the toolbox in the shed and pried some of the boards off the windows, letting the light stench still lingered but it was less, now. She peered around the cabin, satisfied with her handiwork. A bloodstain on the carpet caught her eye. Looking at it made her stomach turn, so she pulled up the rug and threw it in a trash bag. She'd had enough bloodshed for a lifetime.

After she'd made the place a little more tolerable, she went into her room, avoiding Hop's and its ghosts. With a mechanic sort of efficiency, she began throwing her belongings in boxes. Her bedclothes, the rest of her clothing, her radio, her trinkets and stuffed animals, everything. All in boxes, uprooted and rid of dust and packed away. After she'd finished with her room, she went into the living room. She worked quickly, emotionlessly, trying not to let the cracks widen and failing miserably. She selected a few books from the bookshelf. Anne of the Green Gables and Webster's Dictionary and the Children's Encyclopedia. Her hands shook as she removed framed photos from the mantel shelf. With everything packed away, only Hopper's room remained.

She paused in the doorway, trembling, with a lump in her throat so big she couldn't swallow. She steeled herself, holding her breath, and stepped inside. She lifted a framed photo of Sarah from the top of his dresser and almost dropped it, she was shaking so badly. She clutched it to her chest, head beginning to hurt in an effort to stop the tears. They came, anyway, streaming down her cheeks as she opened a drawer and pulled out one of his old flannels. She clutched the fabric to her chest, sinking to her knees. She clapped a hand to her mouth as a sob wracked her body. She'd known this was coming, she'd felt it building inside. A ticking time bomb, waiting to go off. Known she'd been standing at a kind of precipice, wearing thin.

She hadn't cried at his funeral. She was just numb. Everything was wrong. This past month everything felt distant and unimportant and empty, like she was looking at things through someone else's eyes. And nothing helped ease the ache in her chest, the hole where he should be. How was she supposed to go on when the difference between the before and the after, between a prison and a home, began and ended with one person? How was she supposed to just keep going? He was supposed to be there. He was supposed to watch Miami Vice with her on Fridays, and read her chapters of Anne and spin her around the kitchen to Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison. He was supposed to take her fishing at Lover's Lake and Trick-Or-Treating on Halloween (even though Mike said it was for little kids). But he wasn't there and he would never be around to do any of those things and she couldn't fathom how that could be. And now it was staring her in the face and she was staring back, and what she saw was almost too painful to bear.

El's arm flung out as she struggled to anchor herself, to hold onto something as her world spun out of control. She knocked his ashtray off the bedside table and it shattered against the wall. She pulled her knees up to her chest, burying her face in the fabric of his shirt, and it hurt, it hurt so bad . . . and then Joyce was there, enfolding El in her arms, rocking her, smoothing her curls and whispering words of comfort, until El's sobs quieted to faint hiccups and she clutched at Joyce, rubbed raw and exposed. A live wire. She was so mad, at the universe and it's sick jokes. For pushing her face up to the window and then closing the curtain. For giving her a bit of happiness, a family, and then snatching it away, again.

The phone's shrill ring derailed El's train of thought. She pushed away those storm clouds and impatiently dashed something wet from her cheek, crossing the room.

"Hello?" She said.

"El, are you there? It's Mike."

"Mike." She breathed. She crossed to the bed and lay on it, rolling onto her back and clutching the phone to her chest, twisting the cord around her finger.

"It's good to hear your voice," he said.

"It's good to hear you, too." She felt a smile spreading across her cheeks and bit her lip.

"You wouldn't believe what happened today," Mike said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "Lucas was fixing one of the sets for _Alice In Wonderland_ , you know, the school play that Dustin's forcing us to help with, and he fell off a ladder and chipped his tooth! It was so gross, there was blood everywhere . . ."

"Gross!"

"I know, right? It was disgusting."

El laughed.

"Opening night's like two weeks away. Maybe you can come down a little bit before Thanksgiving, so you can see the play. Dustin's really excited about it. I'm helping with the lights. I'm sure we can find a job for you. You could help out with makeup or costumes or something, but you don't have to. I mean, if you just wanna watch that's totally okay and we can just go out for celebratory milkshakes or something after—"

"Mike!" She yelled, exasperated and amused, interrupting the seemingly endless stream of words tumbling from his mouth.

"Yeah?"

"I want to help."

"Really?"

"Really." El giggled.

"Good, 'cause I don't think I can wait till Thanksgiving to see you again. That's not happening."

"twenty-six days," she said, solemnly. "Too long."

"Yeah, way too long." They lapsed into a long, melancholic silence. Silence, in Mike's case, was a rare occurrence, and El struggled to find a topic of conversation that didn't hit too close to home. To monsters or Russians or fifty-three excruciatingly long days apart. None were forthcoming, and she was grateful when Mike asked, a little hurriedly, if she'd unpacked all of her boxes.

"Yes."

"I wish I could see you," he sighed. "Right now. Not in a week. Not in a month. Now."

"Me too."

"I bet you look really beautiful."

"Mike!" She reprimanded, smile widening.

"Have your, um, you-know-whats . . ." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Your powers, have they come back?"

"No." She said, glumly, picking at a loose thread in the quilt draped across her bed. "I think they're . . ." She struggled to find the right word. "Dormant. Sleeping. They're still here, but it's like . . . I'm tired. Like my battery is dead. I can still feel them, sometimes. I get . . ." She bit her lip, frustrated. Articulation had never been her strong suit and today she seemed to be having an especially difficult time getting words out. "I get dreams. Flashes, where I'm in my dream circle."

"The void?"

"Yes." She paused, staring at the constellations of glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to her ceiling. "It's by accident. I don't try to go there. I'm here and then I'm not. It's like I'm . . . stuck."

"Is it scary?"

"What?"

"Are you scared, when you get stuck in there? Like a nightmare?" The concern in his voice was obvious and it made her chest ache.

"No," she lied. The truth was, it terrified her. The dreams happened at random, sometimes during the day, sometimes while she slept. Though it was the best word she had to describe them, they didn't feel like dreams. She'd open her eyes and wind surrounded in darkness, ankle-deep in water, with disembodied, distant voices echoing around her. It wasn't like before, it was different. Sometimes she felt another presence with her. Beside her, behind her. But she could never see it and it passed like a fleeting shadow. She wasn't controlling it, couldn't control it. She was helpless to do anything but wait until she felt the familiar tug at her insides as she dropped back into her own body. Dropping on a rollercoaster, Will had said. Yeah, she guessed it felt a lot like that. She'd wake, drenched in sweat, jaws aching from clenching her teeth. Sometimes, her nose bled.

"I don't get stuck for very long. One or two minutes, maybe," she told him.

"It sounds like the same thing that was happening to Will, last year. He had . . . episodes. He called them 'now memories' or something. It was like he was stuck. In between."

"In between," she echoed.

"You don't think . . . you don't think it's back, do you? That the gate's open?"

"No." She said. "I don't go to the Upside Down. I just go . . . inside my head."

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

"Promise?"

"Mike . . ." She sat up, rolled her eyes. "I promise."

Mike laughed. It was a beautiful sound. Warm and everything familiar. A safe sound. A happy sound. El couldn't help but join in, lips pursed as she suppressed a giggle. They were interrupted as someone knocked on the door, two quick beats, and Joyce poked her head around.

"El, sweetie, it's time for dinner."

El nodded. "In a minute?"

"Sure." Joyce nodded, and closed the door.

"Mike, I have to go."

"I'll talk to you later, okay?

"Okay."

"El?"

"Hmm?"

"I . . . I miss you."

"I miss you too."

Her stomach sank as he hung up and the line went dead, the tone ringing in her ears—an unignorable reminder of the hundreds of miles between them, the void she couldn't cross. She hung up and fell back on the pillows, staring at the ceiling, wishing he was there. She wished he was there to take her hand, to make up stories just to get her to laugh. Talking to him on the phone, with so much space between them, it just wasn't the same. She missed the scent of him, missed the freckles dotting the bridge of his nose, the locks of hair that fell in his eyes and drove her crazy with the urge to brush them away. His dark eyelashes, his coffee irises and the way his nose scrunched up when he laughed . . .

She got up and trudged down the hall to the kitchen with these things fluttering in her heart like moth's wings, missing and wishing and longing.

They had leftover spaghetti for dinner. El picked at her plate, aggressively unhungry and simultaneously guilty for not eating whatever Joyce put in front of her. Silence hung heavy over the table. Will dodged Joyce's questions about school, about the art project he was still determinedly keeping a well-guarded secret. Jonathan tried to engage El in conversation, and she spat out one word answers. She knew this was what families did. That they talked at the dinner table and they cracked jokes and that it was _normal_ and _expected_ and _good manners_ , but the truth was she just didn't feel like talking. She felt like glowering at her plate and stabbing her meatball with a fork and not talking, which wasn't fair. Joyce was trying her best, and El knew she was just another weight on her shoulders. Fair or not, El still felt like a stranger. Like she'd overstayed her welcome, and that feeling twisted in her gut like the Mind Flayer's fatal tendrils.

 _Festering_.

There was that word again. An ugly, deadly, diseased word.

She didn't want to be a burden. She didn't belong here. She belonged in front of the old and staticky t.v. at the cabin with Hop, while he knocked back another double-whiskey and taught her to play poker and stumbled through haphazard explanations of the Vietnam War and taxes and his involvement in the homicide sector of the N.Y.P.D. This . . . this was all wrong. Wrong and sure as hell not fair, because Will's mom came back and Hop didn't . . . and how could she even think that?

Her fork slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor. She pushed back from her plate, clenching her fists to conceal the trembling.

"El, sweetie, are you okay?"

"Yes." Her breath snagged in her throat.

"Honey, you've barely touched your food. You sure you're okay?"

"Yes." El's eyes fixed on her plate. "May . . . may I be excused?"

Joyce nodded. "Of course."

El sprang from the table, barely making it to her room before the tears began to fall. She slammed the door and slumped against it, hugging her arms around her chest, feeling herself splintering, shattering. Coming undone.


	2. Hit and Run

"Can you just stop talking for like five seconds? I'm trying to concentrate," Mike snapped, peering at the instruction manual spread across his lap. He clicked the flashlight on and held it above his head, squinting at the wires and switches crisscrossing the lightboard's rear panel.

"Oh god, he's gonna fry the thing," Dustin moaned.

"I'm not gonna fry it." Mike growled, nose about two inches from the manual as he thumbed through it, looking for a diagram of the lightboard's inner wiring.

"Let _me_ try," Dustin demanded, trying to shove Mike out of the way. Max thumped him upside the head with her playbook, knocking his hat sideways.

"Shut up and let him focus, dumbass."

"Thank you, _Maxine_ ," Mike said, in an exaggerated, gracious voice. "At least someone has faith in me."

"Don't get used to it, dingus. I'm just tired of Henderson's constant whining. Lights this and costumes that and blah blah blah blah BLAH," she said, settling herself on a plastic chair opposite him with a huff. "And don't call me Maxine."

"Well, I'm still ninety-nine percent certain he's going to burn the place down," Dustin said, straightening his hat. "Jesus."

"Um, remind me again who spilled paint all over the tea party scene yesterday?" Max quipped.

"That was an accident, okay? Can't we just forget about it?" Mike followed Dustin's gaze across the stage, to where Katie, a willowy upperclassman in charge of set design, knelt over the cardboard background, feverishly painting over the flecks of red splattered all over the left corner.

"How's it going, Katie?" Dustin asked, nervously.

"Still not speaking to you." She fired back without missing a beat, glowering at him. Dustin averted his eyes, cheeks reddening. Mike grinned.

"Honestly, Henderson, you're a danger to yourself and others."

"You know what, Mike? You can take that manual and shove it up your—"

"Real mature," Max interjected, with a sigh. She got up and stalked away, tossing a lock of flaming hair over her shoulder. Mike shook his head, returning his attention to manual.

"I think if I plug this . . . here . . ." He stuck his tongue between his teeth, detaching a coil of wire from its socket and moved it to an empty one. "It should work."

Mike held his breath, plugging the power cord into the wall. The switches on the board lit up. Mike grinned. He flicked one of the switches, and one of the main spotlights clicked on, illuminating the stage. His grin widened.

"Well, ladies and gentlemen, looks like we're back in business," he said.

"He actually did it." Dustin breathed.

_"Cocky motherfucker . . ."_

Mike turned. Max had reappeared at his shoulder, snacking on a bag of Cheetos. She cocked her brow. "Gotta say, Wheeler, I'm impressed."

The spotlight clicked off, and the illuminated switches on the console flickered once, twice, then shut off completely. The grin slid off Mike's face. He sat up, flicking the power switch off and on.

"What the hell?" He muttered, returning to his manual. "I don't understand. It should work . . ."

"Clearly, it's not." Max said, peering at the manual over his shoulder.

"Uh, Mike?" Dustin said.

"Shut up, Dustin, let me focus."

"Mike!" Dustin yelled, pointing to the board. It had begun to belch thick, acrid smoke.

"Shit!" Mike cried, springing from the chair. Dustin dashed down the stairs and retrieved the fire extinguisher. White foam sputtered out of the nozzle, coating the lightboard. Max rushed to unplug it. The three of them stood there, open-mouthed, staring at the foam-covered console, still belching smoke.

"What . . . the hell . . ." Dustin breathed.

Mike closed the manual with _snap_ and tossed it over his shoulder, lips pulled down in resignation.

"I give up."

After they'd been cornered by the drama teacher, Ms. Shaffer, and suffered through an excruciating lecture about electrical safety and respecting school property, they retrieved their bikes and plunged into the rain, hoods pulled up over their heads.

"We're so dead." Dustin groaned. "When my mom finds out we have to buy the school a new lightboard, she's gonna murder me."

"You don't owe the school anything," Max said. "King Twerp, on the other hand, well . . ."

"It wasn't my fault," Mike grinded out, squinting as rain dripped into his eyes. "It was an _accident_. I was following the instructions. Remind me, again, why I even agreed to help you with this stupid play?"

"Remind me, again, why we're still friends?" Dustin retorted.

"You guys are _so_ dramatic." Max groaned. "Ugh, it's like you guys are on your periods or something. I'm over it."

"I have a right to be pissed off. I gotta somehow cough up three hundred bucks to pay for the damn lightboard. I'm taking all the crap because I'm the only one who knows shit about electrical science."

"Obviously, you don't."

"Oh, and you do? Well, _Maxine_ , if you're such an expert, why can't I remember you offering to help?"

"I'm a zoomer not an electrician, _Michael_ , and I did offer to help. You just don't remember because you had your head so far up your ass you couldn't hear me."

"Enough!" Dustin interjected, braking fast and sending drops of water flying in every direction. "We'll split the cost of the damage three ways. Friendships repaired, egos restored. Alright?"

"Hell no! Do I look like I got an extra hundred bucks lying around?"

"Hey, it's only fair!"

"Is not! I'm not dishing out all that cash just because _you_ misread the instructions." She clambered back on her bike and pedaled away.

"Do yourself a favor and get some glasses, Wheeler," she called.

"Where are _you_ going?" Dustin yelled, to which Max promptly replied with a middle finger over her shoulder as she rounded the corner and whipped out of sight.

"Probably going to suck face with Lucas."

"Urgh, okay, I really did _not_ need that mental image," Dustin groaned.

Mike looked at Dustin, shaking his head.

"Someday, I swear, I'm gonna . . ." Mike feigned a strangling motion with his fists.

"Mike, c'mon man. It's not worth it."

"I'm not paying three hundred bucks for the fucking lightboard, Dustin, okay? It's not happening."

Dustin frowned. "We'll figure something out."

"She's so irritating. I don't get how you put up with her."

"Same way I put up with all you dipshits," Dustin said. "Patience." He shrugged. "And, you know, superior intelligence."

Mike snorted. "Superior intelligence my ass."

"I've said it before and I'll say it again. You guys run around acting like goblins with intelligence scores of zero. I'm the only one with any sense."

"Says the idiot who decided the end of the world was a good time to perform a musical number."

Mike began pedaling, Dustin in tow.

"Hey, I saved our asses."

"Susan saved our asses."

"Suzie. It's _Suzie_ , Jesus, how many times do I have to tell you. _Su-zie_."

"Whatever."

"Hey, it's not my fault you've got a stick up your butt."

"Oh, I'm the one with a stick up my butt?" Mike asked.

"Yeah. Just because El isn't here doesn't mean you get to be an asshole all the time, alright? Been there, done that."

Mike's stomach sank. He glared at Dustin, then sped up.

"Mike, c'mon!" Dustin called. Mike ignored him. "Jeez, Mike, I'm sorry!"

He whipped around the corner, pedaling fast, working his way up a hill and down again, breathing hard, rainwater pooling in his eyes.

He rounded a corner, and the shriek of metal filled his ears as a car braked hard and fast in front of him. Mike slammed on the breaks and tumbled over the front of his handlebars. He threw his palms out to break his fall, knees skidding on the asphalt, and cracked his skull against the edge of the sidewalk. Light jetted across the back of his eyelids in bursts as the car whipped around the corner and the driver, a middle-aged man with a receding hairline and severe features, shouted "watch it, kid!" out the open window as he sped down the street.

Mike lay on his back, clutching his bleeding palms to his chest, staring at the clouds above him, heavy with rainwater. He couldn't decide if the flashes assaulting his vision were lightning or the result of a head injury or both. He struggled to his feet, head spinning, the orange glow of the streetlight above him swimming in and out of focus. He glanced down, assessing the damage. His jeans were torn, and the skin underneath could've easily been mistaken for Hamburger Helper. A bloodstain spread from the wound, coloring the denim an ugly black. He straightened, cradling his bloodied hands, teeth chattering from the cold and shock. He made to bent down and paused, waiting for the world to stop spinning, before retrieving his bike from the ground. He walked (or rather, limped) the rest of the way home, wincing as every little dip and bump in the road sent tremors of stinging pain nipping at the wounds on his hands. He used the bike to support his weight, struggling to keep hold of the handle bars sticky with his blood.

By the time Mike reached home, the storm had worsened. Wind bit at his face and thunder rumbled, loud and angry, above him. He stumbled up the walk and through the door, almost tripping on the stairs. He ignored his mother's greeting, careening down the hall and closing the bathroom door. He turned on the faucet and winced as the water ran over his ragged palms. He watched the water, stained pink with his blood, disappear down the black eye of the drain. After he'd washed away most of the mud and debris, he reached over and gathered a wad of toilet paper in his hand, using it to staunch the flow of blood. He collapsed on the toilet seat and began to examine the damage done to his knees, his thoughts sluggish and far between, head spinning. His mother's sharp knock on the door sent another burst of light across his vision.

"Mike, you okay?"

"God, Mom, I'm fine!"

The door swung open and Mike's head whipped up, dazed and confused, to find himself face to face with Nancy. She topped short, eyes widening, mouth forming a puckered 'o' as her gaze moved from his bloodied knees to the wad of scarlet toilet paper in his hands to the bruise blossoming on his temple.

"Jesus, what happened?"

"Some asshole almost hit me. I fell," he said, with a shrug.

Nancy snatched the wad of toilet paper, thoroughly soaked, from his hands and tossed it in the waste bin. She pulled a pristine, white hand towel from one of the drawers under the sink and pressed it over his bleeding hands.

"That's one of mom's good towels," he mumbled.

"It'll wash out," Nancy said, not looking at him as she busied herself with the scrapes on his knees. Her brows knit.

"God, Mike . . ."

"It's just a scrape." He said, with a shrug. Nancy straightened, laying a hand across his cheek and tilting his head pack, peering at the bruises patterning his temple and forehead.

"Did you hit your head?"

Mike winced sucking in a breath. "Yeah."

"Are you dizzy?"

"A little."

"You might have a concussion." She sighed, folding her arms across her chest. "Who hit you?"

" _Almost_ hit me," he corrected, "and I dunno. Didn't get a good look at him. I can't remember what his car looked like. I think it was silver."

"He just . . . drove off?"

Mike nodded, then winced, head throbbing.

"Asshole."

Mike snorted. "Yeah."

"Well, your knees don't seem to be bleeding much. Why don't you get in the shower and wash up and I'll find you some bandages, okay?

He stood. Nancy left, closing the door. Mike peeled of his rain and blood soaked clothes and climbed under the water. Once he'd finished and changed into his pajamas, Nancy helped him with bandages, painstakingly wrapping his hands with gauze and struggling to press band-aids over the worst scrapes on his knees. When she finished, she straightened, brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes.

"Thanks, I guess," he said. Nancy cocked an eyebrow.

"You're . . . welcome." She tossed the bloodied rags and bandage wrappers in the waste bin by the door and sighed.

"God, I've had enough blood and guts for a lifetime."

"Say that again, maybe our lives won't be ruined by another interdimensional monster attack. If we're lucky."

She laughed. "Seriously, though, I don't think you need any kind of professional medical attention, and I definitely don't think you're going to die, if it's any consolation." She cracked a smile. Mike sighed, dramatically.

"That's reassuring."

"If you have a concussion, I don't think it's severe. Just . . . get some rest, okay?"

Mike nodded. Nancy left, and he eased himself onto his bed, rolling onto his side. He stared at the red numbers on his digital alarm clock, listening to the ringing in his ears, thinking about the man in the car and the scar curving like a scythe from temple to chin. Rain, flashes of light, and Dustin's exasperation. _Just because El's not here doesn't mean you get to be an asshole . . ._ He should call her. _Seven-thirty, I promise._ He'd missed their pre-arranged time. The thought crossed his mind as sleep pulled him under and he drifted off.


	3. Kid Fears

Billy's fingers tightened around El's throat. Through her tears, she could see the malice in his eyes. The anger. The desire to kill.

"No!" She tried to scream, fingernails scraping weakly at his arm, trying to pry his fingers away. "Stop it!"

Her feet dangled off the ground, and she kicked at the empty air, desperate to find a foothold. Her lungs screamed for air, and white spots erupted behind her eyelids like fireworks. Her vision began to dim. Breathing was unthinkable. Consciousness was quickly slipping away from her. She wasn't a match for brute strength, and this wasn't Billy. This . . . this wasn't human.

He was in her face now, the stench of his breath like rotting meat in the sun, like death and mildew and disease.

_We're going to end you._

_We're going to end your friends._

_We're going to end everyone._

His words reverberated around her skull, drifting into the black, and it wasn't just one voice but many. Hundreds, maybe thousands. Screaming in her ears. A horrible cacophony, enough to drive a person mad. She felt her eyelids growing heavy, senses failing, and waited for the end.

It never came. Billy's form faded into a puff of smoke and she fell like a ragdoll, sinking, sinking . . .

She woke with a jolt, sitting up, half in the dream, half out. She could still feel his fingers around her throat, still hear his voice hissing in her ear. Her legs were tangled in the sheets, and her cheeks were soaked with tears. A bit of blood dotted her upper lip. El licked her lips, tasting it. She wiped it on the back of her hand and pressed her trembling fingers to her lips, bursting into tears.

Footsteps sounded outside her door, and Joyce was there, brows knit and lips turned downward. She crossed wordlessly to the bed and pulled El into her lap, arms encircling her.

"I'm sorry," El gasped.

"Sorry?" Joyce frowned. "What're you sorry for?"

"Waking you . . I just . . . I had a bad dream."

"Don't be sorry." Joyce said, squeezing her shoulder. "You've got nothing to be sorry for."

They lapsed into silence, and then Joyce asked, "do you want to talk about it?"

El shook her head, knowing she wouldn't be able to put it into words whatever it was. A dream. A memory. An episode. She didn't want to worry Joyce.

"I get nightmares too, you know. It's normal. You've been through a trauma. We all have. We've all gotta work through it in our own way. On our own time."

"It . . . sucks," El sniffed.

Joyce laughed.

"Yeah, it really sucks."

"What . . . what do you dream about?" El asked.

"I dream about my boys, mostly. I dream that Will goes missing, again, or I dream about that . . . _thing_. I dream about you, sometimes, too."

"Me?"

Joyce nodded.

"I dream about you, hurting or scared. It makes me sad, because I don't want you to hurt anymore. I want you to be happy." Joyce swallowed, hard, eyes glittering with tears. "That's all I want."

Joyce tucked a loose curl behind El's ear.

"You're my kid. You know that, right? You're family. I want you to feel like you have a home, here. I know that's what Hop would've wanted. He just wanted you to be happy."

El's eyes welled with tears. She inspected her hands and knotted her fingers together, worrying her lip. Why did it hurt this much, after all this time? Why did it still ache like a blow to the sternum?

"Are you . . . happy?" El asked, eyes widening.

"I try to be. I have good days and bad days, like everyone else. I guess that's all we can do, right? Try to get through another day, try to recognize the beauty despite the pain."

El nodded.

"Try," she repeated, hardening with resolve, "try to be happy."

"Try to be happy, but accept that some days are bad days. Sometimes you feel sad, and that's okay. Sad is good."

"Sad is good," El echoed. _The hurt is good._ She looked at Joyce, offering a trembling smile.

"Thank you."

"Sure thing, sweetie," Joyce said, squeezing her hand. "You should try to get some sleep, okay?" Joyce stood, smoothing El's blankets. El looked at her and nodded, feeling young.

"Okay."

Joyce closed the door, and El stared at the ceiling, drifting, after a while, into a restless slumber filled with wandering dreams she wouldn't remember when she woke.

Nightmares were nothing new. El had always been plagued with them. They worsened when something bad happened. When Papa, no, _Brenner_ , locked her in the Room, or in the wake of interdimensional monster attacks, because, yeah, that was a thing that just happened, now. They got better, though, with time. They didn't ever really go away, but they stayed in the back of her mind and she carried on with her (mostly) normal life. As normal as possible, considering . . .

After Starcourt, though, they got bad. At least, that's the best defining moment she could think of when she tried to assign any kind of timeline to everything that had happened. The before and after. That's the only way she could map out her life, the only way she knew how. Before the lab and after. Before Starcourt and after. The nightmares were few and far between, and then the Mind Flayer came back and they got worse. They kept getting worse.

Nightmares interrupted El's sleeping and waking moments. Sometimes they were flashbacks, and everything faded and she'd find herself back in some memory, accurate to the most inconsequential detail, and she was helpless to do anything but wait until it was over. Sometimes she found herself trapped in the void, washed-out voices whispering in the darkness. Sometimes they actually felt like dreams. Vague, puzzling fragments. Long corridors and dark forests. Ashes and spores choking the breath from her lungs. Loved ones with glazed eyes and mouths agape, faces disfigured with terror, even in death. Mike and Hop. Lucas and Mama. Kali and Max. And blood. So much blood.

She was lucky to snag two or three hours in a row without waking with her fingernails digging into the skin of her palms, deep enough to draw blood. Dark bags weighed on the undersides of her eyes. She forgot to eat, couldn't quiet her mind. Couldn't silence the screaming. She spent hours in the dead of night with the supercom clutched in her hands, listening to the static and letting it fill up the empty spaces in her mind, trying to give the signal a little nudge.

Maybe she could reach Mike, maybe he'd talk her out of the rabbit hole she'd fallen into, like he used to. She'd listen to him tell stories, and then they'd fall silent and she'd lay there and listen to his breathing and drift off. And his voice was everything familiar, the perfect distraction. She knew he still slept with the supercom by his bed, in case she needed him, but she was well out of range and her powers (or lack thereof) weren't in favor of midnight rendezvous on the radio. But they still had their phone calls and she could still hear his voice, and maybe that was a small victory in itself. Maybe that was enough.

Except their nightly phone calls had been overtaken with Mike's incessant questioning. His questions were telltale of his ongoing quest to protect her, to reassure himself of her well-being. She wanted to say his concern for her was misplaced, even if she was exhausted and skipping meals and seeing things that weren't there, and she wished he wouldn't worry. He must've heard it in her voice. The tension, the weariness. She wasn't really surprised. He could always read her better even than she could read herself.

"Did you get enough sleep last night?"

"What did you eat for breakfast?"

"Did you have another nightmare? Do you want to talk about it?"

El was almost glad for all the space between them, because she knew if she could see his face she wouldn't be able to lie to him as well as she did when she told him she was eating and that she'd gotten a good night's sleep. She wouldn't be able to ignore the guilt twisting in her gut. Festering. She knew he didn't buy it but he didn't push her, and for that she was grateful.

_I won't even say anything, I just wanna know if you're okay._

"I'm okay, Mike. I promise."

Maybe she wasn't hiding it as well as she thought. Even Joyce noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the leftover food on her plate. El was helping her wash the dishes, elbow-deep in sudsy water, when Joyce asked her, as casually as you would ask about the weather, if she wanted to see a counselor.

"Counselor?"

"Someone to talk to. Kind of like a doctor. They listen to you and help you heal. My co-worker recommended a post-traumatic stress specialist."

"Post-traumatic stress?"

"Some people get sick after they go through a scary situation. Sometimes you lose sleep. Sometimes people suffer from panic attacks, where it's hard to breathe and they're reliving their worst memories" Joyce said. She dried her hands on a dishtowel and looked at El, brows knit.

"Your nightmares . . . they seem like they're getting worse."

El stared at her shoes, tracing circles on the floor with the toe of her Chuck Taylor.

"Sweetie, I just want to make sure you have someone to talk to. A professional, who may be able to help you better than I can."

"I'm . . . I'm fine."

Joyce frowned.

"Okay. If you change your mind, though, just let me know. I'm here for you."

El nodded, loading a stack of plates in the washer, mind racing.

When Joyce released El from her duties, she headed for her room. Something made her pause outside of Will's door, which had been left ajar. She could hear music thumping on the stereo. She sucked her teeth and, after a split second's hesitation, rapped on the doorframe, three-one-two, and eased the door open.

She found Will sitting on his bed, legs sprawled over the edge, a sketchbook balanced on his knee. He barely looked up as the door creaked open on rusted hinges and El stood in the doorway. Her hands pulled restlessly a patch of loose threadwork in the sleeve of her hand-me-down-sweater. Her eyes held the wide, expression of a prey animal scenting the air for danger. She stood on her tip-toes, hesitant and poised for flight, eyeing Will like he was something wild, unpredictable. An animal which might attack at the slightest provocation.

"Hi," she said, quietly, still trying to read him. Dipping her toes in his emotional waters

"Hey," he returned, without glancing up from his drawing. The word was toneless, asking nothing and giving nothing in return. Neither an invitation or a refusal. A shrug.

El stepped inside.

Will's room was a little larger to hers, walls painted the same, dull cream color. He'd pushed his bed against the far wall. On his wall hung a _Jaws_ poster and a collection of artwork. An army of Star Wars and D&D figurines stood like sentries on the windowsill.

"What are you drawing?" El asked, craning her neck to peer at the sketchbook across his lap.

"Nothing," Will said, quickly shifting the paper away from her so she wouldn't see it. El pretended not to notice, rubbing her elbows and staring at her shoes. There were so many things she wanted to say to him, and no good way to begin. The words got all twisted on her tongue. She bit her lip, opting for silence, and moved to sit on the edge of his bed.

Will looked up, eyes narrowing.

"Do you need something?" he said, perhaps a bit too harshly, glaring at her with eyes like flint. El blinked, taken aback.

"I . . . I just wanna talk."

Will said nothing, attention returning to his drawing. El went on, picking her way through the minefield of words dancing on the tip of her tongue.

"I wanted to ask if . . ." paused, worrying her lip. "If we can be friends."

Will's face softened a little. He seemed to sense he'd crossed some sort of line. When he spoke, his words were gentler, kinder.

"We're friends, El." He closed his sketchbook and set it on the bedside table. "What made you think we weren't?"

"You seem mad."

"Mad? I'm not mad. I mean, I am, but not at you. Okay?" His eyes flitted to meet her gaze, briefly, then fell to the floor. "We're friends. That's not gonna change."

"Why are you mad?"

Will frowned.

"I dunno. I guess I'm not really mad, just upset. About a lot of things."

"What things?"

"I don't know . . . everything."

"Everything?" El's brows knit.

"No, I don't know," Will said, rubbing his temples. "Everything's different now. The move, the new house. The party's all split up, and I don't know anyone at school. I miss how everything used to be. And now it's all fucked up."

"Fucked up," El repeated, with a nod.

Will snorted, a rare smile tugging at his lips. "Yeah, fucked up."

El reached for his hand and took it.

"I miss them, too," she said, "I miss how things used to be."

"I just . . . I wish we hadn't moved. But I don't blame my mom for wanting to, you know? Bad things happened to us. All of us, and if I put myself in her shoes, I guess I would want to move, too."

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why do you want to wear your mom's shoes?"

"No," Will said, hurriedly. "It's a figure of speech. You know, like, if you put yourself in someone's shoes, you see things from their perspective. You understand what they think and why they think it."

El nodded.

"I guess . . . I don't know, even though all that stuff happened, the good things always outnumbered the bad." Will looked away. "Sorry," he said, hurriedly. "I know it's stupid."

"It's not stupid," El said. "There were . . . a lot of good things."

"I miss the party, most of all. Nothing's gonna go back to the way it was. It really sucks."

El's brows knit.

"Yeah, it sucks. I miss the party, too, and Ho—" El's voice died in her throat. She looked away, because something dangerously wet was threatening to spill from her lashes, and she didn't want Will to see.

"Hopper," Will finished. He squeezed her hand. "I'm sorry. I didn't get the chance to tell you. I know he meant a lot to you."

El let go of Will's hand and wiped the tears from her cheeks.

"My dad left when I was little. I was sad, too. But it gets easier. It did for me, anyway, so maybe it will for you, too."

"Gone?"

"No," Will said, cheeks reddening. "He lives in Indianapolis. He left. I guess family life didn't really suit him or some bullshit like that. He and my mom used to fight all the time. And one day he just . . . walked out. That's the night Jonathan and I built Castle Byers."

"Do you still see him?"

"No. I don't want to. And I'm sure he doesn't want to see me either. He . . . he wasn't a very good dad. He wasn't a good person."

"Mouthbreather," El said. Will laughed.

"Yeah, the biggest, dumbest mouthbreather there ever was. He used to make me play sports even though I hated sports and I sucked at them. He'd call me names until I cried. So, good riddance, I guess." Will laughed. He looked at El, face softening.

"Hop was a good dad."

El nodded. "He was."

Silence fell over them, and it wasn't entirely uncomfortable.

"Hey, I'm sorry. For snapping at you, I mean, and making you think I was mad at you. I just, everything's different, right? And that makes me upset, so I take it out on you or Jonathan or on my mom, and I know that's not fair. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." El said.

"And I know I wasn't the greatest friend to you, either. It's just . . . I was . . ." Will trailed off, sucking his lip. "I was jealous."

"Jealous?"

"Yeah. Mike's my best friend, and he was spending so much time with you and it was like . . . things had already changed, you know? Even before we moved. And I blamed it on you, and that was a dick move. It sucked. I suck."

"You don't suck."

Will shrugged. "Point is, I was a jerk and I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry, too," El said. Another silence lapsed between them.

"I wanna show you something," Will said. He snatched his sketchbook off the bedside table and opened it. El scooted closer, peering at the drawing.

"I've been working on designing a new Castle Byers. I thought we could all built it together," he said, and El could hear the excitement in his voice. There was less hesitation behind his words, and they tumbled from his mouth like the most natural thing, because he was talking about something he loved and that made him happy and proud. The feeling was infectious. El felt the corners of her mouth tilting upward as she looked at the drawing. A bigger, better version of the fort that stood in the Byers' old backyard, carefully lined and shaded with colored pencil.

"What d'you think?"

El looked at him, cracking a grin.

"It's pretty bitchin'."

She and Will planned to build Castle Byers 2.0 in the morning. Jonathan agreed to drive them to the scrap yard for supplies, and Joyce kept tools in the shed out back she said they could use if they were careful. That night, El fell asleep with a weight lifted off her shoulders, replaced with a childish excitement for the day ahead. Beginnings of pleasant dreams flickered in spaces between thoughts as she drifted off.

Hours later, though, she woke with a jolt and shot upright, heart racing. She slid out of bed and padded down the hall. She went into the kitchen. The rhythmic _tap tap tap_ of water droplets falling into the bowl of the sink accompanied the soft ticking of the wall clock, the only two sounds to be heard. She crossed to sink and shut off the faucet, straining her ears. There it was, a low hum. The faintest vibration, like the sound she heard whenever she tried to use her powers, these days. The sound of shifting air without explicable cause. She followed the sound into the living room and stopped short, stomach sinking through the floor.

Hopper stood by the sofa, his back to her. The green and coral button-up he wore the day he died was torn and bloodstained and hung in ribbons. He stood still, hands dangling at his sides. Blood dripped from his fingers.

"H-Hop?" El asked, tears welling in her eyes. He didn't turn, didn't give any indication that he had heard her. She stepped toward him, reaching for his hand. He turned on his heel and El stumbled, taken by surprise.

"Hop?"

He didn't look at El, eyes fixed on some indiscernible point behind her. She grabbed his hand, tugging on it.

"Hopper!" It was clear he couldn't hear her, that wherever he was, it wasn't here. El's head whipped from side to side, wildly. She peered into the darkness, trying to see what he saw. But there was nothing, just the dark hallway and the clock _tick tick ticking_ away the seconds and the thin sliver of yellow light leaking out from under Will's door. Strange. El looked at the clock. Three-eighteen a.m. She looked back at Hop, followed the line of his gaze to Will's door. Something was horribly wrong. Something was pulling her toward that door like a moth to a flame. She needed to see inside it, needed to know what was there, and she had a hunch that whatever lived behind that door wanted to see her, too.

She squeezed Hopper's hand, a last ditch effort to catch his attention, and let go.

With tears streaming down her face, she headed for Will's room, trembling from head to toe, knowing, with inexplicable certainty, that if she opened that door there would be hell to pay and determined to see what it was, anyway. The low, supernatural hum in the air had become to sinister shriek in her ear. She drew closer, heart thudding rapidly in her temples. She rested a hand on the knob and threw one last glance at Hop over her shoulder. His eyes remained distant, almost glossy, and El knew there remained some distance between them. That he was worlds away, even if she could see him. She sucked in a breath and turned the knob, pushing the door open.

The knob turned to smoke beneath her fingertips. El's knees buckled as her surroundings, the walls, the floor, disintegrated. She sat up, back in her bed, face and pillow soaked with tears. She could still feel his hand in hers, and the magnetic pull of something otherworldly, drawing her towards that door. A low frequency hum still vibrated in her ears.

She threw her blankets off and burst out of her room, racing down the hall.

"Will!"

She threw his door open, and met his eyes, edged with sleep and confusion, across the room.

"El?" He mumbled, groggily. "What's wrong?"

She reached for him, lips trembling, cheeks streaming with tears. He scrambled out of bed and grabbed her hand.

"I . . . I s-saw . . . I saw . . ." she stammered, clutching his hand, knuckles bloodless and stark white.

"What? What did you see?"

"Hop . . ."

"You saw Hopper? In a dream?"

She shook her head. "No. Not in a dream. In a . . . now memory."

Will looked at her, fear in his eyes.

"Are you sure? It was probably just a dream, El, a flashback. It wasn't real."

El shook her head.

"It was different. He wasn't here, but he was somewhere else . . . close. Like a reflection."

"That's impossible," Will said, shaking his head, knowing in his heart of hearts that of course it wasn't impossible. Two years ago he would've been a lot less ready to believe that she had, in fact, seen Hopper, wherever he was. In another dimension, another plane of existence. It didn't matter. But after all the weird shit that had happened, it was possible, even _likely_ , that she'd crossed some boundary, some void. She'd traveled out of the blue and into the black, and even now Will's gut coiled into knots and goose flesh erupted on his skin.

"There was something else," she said, wiping her nose, which had begun to weep a trickle of blood, on the back of her hand. "There was something in your room. Your door was closed, but I knew there was something on the other side. I don't know what it was, but I know it was bad. I knew I shouldn't open the door, but I tried, anyway."

"What did you see?"

El shook her head, starting to cry.

" _What did you see_ , El?" Will cried, frightened by words and, perhaps more so, by her tears.

"Nothing! I opened the door, and then everything faded I was back here. Back in . . . . . the Rightside Up." She bit her lip, looking at him.

"Was it the Mind Flayer?" Will asked. He was clutching her arm tight enough for it to hurt, but she didn't notice.

"I don't think so. I don't know . . ."

"What's going on? Is something wrong?" Joyce appeared in the doorway, looking worried. Her gaze traveled from El to Will and back again.

"Nothing, Mom," Will said, quickly. "El had a bad dream, that's all."

"Honey, you're bleeding," Joyce said, retrieving a Kleenex from the bathroom and dabbing at El's nose. El took the tissue from her hand.

"Thank you."

Joyce squeezed her shoulder.

"You okay?"

El nodded.

Joyce touched her cheek, looking like she didn't believe her for one second.

"Alright, well, get back to bed, okay? You need rest."

El nodded, shooting Will a look and returning to her room. She tossed and turned in bed for a few minutes, mind racing, heart thudding in her chest. She couldn't stop her thoughts from returning to Hop's glazed, faraway eyes, like a scab you can't help but pick at. The vibration in the air, the clock's ticking—too loud, in her ears. And the blood . . . on his shirt, on his lips, oozing from a cut across his forehead.

El rolled onto her side, fiddling with Sarah's bracelet. She bit her lip and sat up, and, after a moment's hesitation, reached for the phone.


	4. Down the Rabbit Hole

The phone rang, jerking Mike from a feverish sleep. He sat upright, untangling his legs from the sheets, and stumbled into the hall. He picked up the phone on the third ring, panic rising in his throat like bile, hot and sticky.

"Hello?"

The only reasoning behind a phone call at this hour usually involved sickness or death or, in his case, more interdimensional fuckery. Mike suspected the latter. The thought didn't really give him pause, anymore. The world could very well be ending and it wouldn't even be remotely shocking. What did he expect, after he'd made it through not one, not two, but _three_ monster attacks lived to tell the tale? The thought of El at the center of it, however, possibly in danger or in pain, made his heart skip a trembling beat. Fear closed around his lungs when he heard her voice, high and panicky, on the other end.

"El? Are you okay?"

"Mike. I . . . I'm sorry." She said, and it was impossible to miss the distress in her voice, the breathy note of hysteria, the exhaustion wearing it thin. "I know it's late. I just . . ."

"What happened? Did you have another nightmare?"

"Mike?"

Mike's mom emerged from her room, hair in disarray, the edges of her face pulled tight with agitation.

"What is it? Is something wrong?"

"It's nothing. It's El, she needed to tell me something." He snapped, waving her off. Mrs. Wheeler scoffed and folded her arms.

"Does she know what time it is?"

"Jesus, Mom!" Mike hissed, hand clamped over the reciever.

"It's _three o' clock in the morning_ , Michael!"

"It's important!"

"Mike?" El whispered.

"Yeah, sorry El, my mom's being annoying." Mike glared at her and Mrs. Wheeler huffed in annoyance, holding her hands up in mock-surrender. She returned to her room, shooting him a look that screamed _we're gonna talk about this in the morning_ , over her shoulder. Mike watched the door swing shut behind her, returning his attention to the near-hysterics, frightened-out-of-her-mind El on the other end of the line. She was barely holding back tears. He could hear it in her voice.

"Wait, hold on, you _saw_ Hopper?" Mike said. "That's impossible."

"I saw him," El repeated. Mike transferred the phone to his other ear.

"You saw Hopper, and, something was in . . . Will's room?"

"Yes."

"I'm sure it was just a dream, El."

"It wasn't. I _know_ it wasn't. Trust me."

Mike sighed.

"I trust you, El. You know I do. I just . . . Hopper's gone. I'm sorry . . ." Mike stammered, searching for words. "It's just . . . it's impossible."

"It was like . . . a now memory," she said. "When I found Billy, that night in the cabin, and I searched through his memories. Before I came back, I went somewhere else. Remember?"

"Yeah . . ."

It looked like the cabin, like our world, but it wasn't."

"You mean like the Upside Down?"

"No. I don't know what it was. It was something else. Something in between. You weren't there. It was just BIlly, and he'd . . . he'd found us. He talked to me. He said he would hurt me, and everyone else."

Mike ran a hand through his hair. He did remember that night. Too well. He remembered the piles of discarded, bloodstained tissues on the floor. He remembered how tightly she'd held his hand, the look in her eyes, fear and apprehension but strength, too. And he remembered the twin streams of blood leaking from her nostrils, the terror in her voice when she'd screamed his name, locked inside her head, and he couldn't reach her. He couldn't break through the fog, couldn't let her know that he was there, that he'd keep her safe . . .

"When Billy talked to you, you were somewhere in between, right? And just now, in the dream, you went there, again? And Hopper was there?"

"Yes."

"Do you think it's the Mind Flayer? Do you think he's trying to get into your head?" Mike's pulse quickened, thinking about that _thing_. It's gelatinous body, clawed tentacles. Like vines. Like a living version of the Upside Down, itself. Nothing but rot and decay. It had almost killed them.

"I don't think so."

"And you're sure the gate is closed?"

"I . . . I don't know."

"You don't know?" Mike yelped. "You said it wasn't, El!" His blood thickened, lead in his veins. The room spun, and weather it was the after-affects of his concussion or an oncoming panic attack, he didn't know. Probably both.

"El," he began, drawing a shaky breath. "Friends don't lie."

"I don't lie," El said, "I don't know."

"El, listen to me, if that gate's still open, it means the Mind Flayer might still be out there, somewhere. He wants to get to you. He wants to hurt you. And this could be a trap, and he's baiting you, trying to draw you out."

"It's not the Mind Flayer."

"You don't _know_ that, El!" He was aware that he was shouting and couldn't stop. This was days, weeks, of fear and frustration finally driving him to the breaking point. She'd been lying to him on the phone. And she was exhausted and scared and dealing with post-traumatic stress and God knew what else. And he couldn't be there for her, couldn't see her face, couldn't hold her . . . couldn't do anything but scream into the phone and hope she was alright.

Mike sighed, deeply.

"I don't want you to get hurt," he went on, attempting to keep his voice steady so as not to betray just how terrified he was. _I can't lose you again._ "I don't want you risking your life again, okay?"

"It wasn't a trap. It was . . . something else." She paused. "I don't know . . ."

"Exactly! Which is why you need to be careful. You can't just go running headfirst into danger every time you have a weird dream, El, you can't."

"It wasn't a dream!" she spat. "It was real."

"El—"

"Listen to me!" she cried. Mike was relieved, in some backwards way, to hear the venom in her voice. Grateful she was pushing back. Because this whole time he felt like his words were missing their mark, that she'd already let a spark grow into a wildfire he was powerless to stop. And it would destroy her. At least she was hearing him.

"No, El, _you_ listen to me. You don't know what you're dealing with. The last time this happened, the Mind Flayer found us and you almost died. But you seem to be forgetting that little detail. You forget about a lot of stuff when it's convenient for you, El. You forget that you don't have to put your life on the line every time something remotely supernatural happens. You forget that there are people who love you and care about you, and if something happened to you it would hurt them. A lot. But it's fine, I get it, you wanna be the hero, so don't let me stop you because apparently I'm controlling and I treat you like garbage and—"

"Mike," El interrupted, shakily, her voice barely a whisper. "Please . . ."

With that single word, he faltered. She was hurting, and it was because of him. He'd crossed some kind of line and he knew it. So, he did the only smart thing he'd done the entirety of their conversation. He shut up.

She went on. "Hop . . . Hop was there."

"El . . ."

" _Mike_ ," she said. "I need you to trust me. What if Hop's still alive? What if he's stuck somewhere? What if—"

"It was just some stupid dream, El! Hopper's gone. He's gone."

She was silent for a long time.

"I," she began, "I'm sorry I called." The phone clicked, and the line went dead.

"El?" Mike asked. "El!"

No answer. He hung up.

"Fuck!" He kicked the wall. A picture frame slipped off its nail and tumbled to the floor. A string of profanity spilled from Mike's mouth. He bent over and retrieved the picture, running the pad of his finger up the crack in the glass. He set it on the bookshelf and returned to his room. He threw himself on the bed, too upset and frustrated to even think about sleep. He stared at the ceiling, replaying their argument over and over in his mind. The stupid things he'd said and how scared and alone and desperate she'd sounded. Desperate for someone to believe her, to have her back. And he was supposed to be that person and oh, boy, had he fucked up. Royally.

Mike pinched the bridge of his nose, burying his face into his pillow, images of great, supernatural rifts in the earth, of demodogs and blood and El's tearstained face, flashing in quick succession behind his eyelids. He wondered if—and that was a gigantic _if_ —they were, again, under attack and, on a more pressing matter, what he'd say to El in the morning.

Apparently, he'd fallen asleep at some point during the night because when he woke, tousled and more exhausted than ever (if that was possible), it was nearly eleven o'clock. He dragged himself out of bed, wincing as his head throbbed painfully, and went to the kitchen in search of an aspirin and a bowl of cereal.

He perched himself on the counter with a bowl of Cheerios balanced in his lap, staring at the phone on the wall as if it was something poisonous. He shoveled cereal into his mouth, running through a pre-meditated dialogue he'd constructed in his head and trying not to think about how lame it sounded.

He dumped his empty bowl in the sink and sucked his teeth, snagging the phone and dialing the Byers' number from muscle memory alone.

"C'mon, c'mon . . ." Mike muttered, as the phone rang and rang.

" _You've reached the Byers' Household, please leave a message . . . "_

Mike groaned, hanging up. He pushed a hand through his mess of dark hair and chewed his lip. After a moment's hesitation, he dialed again. Still, no answer.

"Shit!"

"That's a bad word," Holly said, matter-of-factually, appearing at his elbow and gazing at him reproachfully.

"I'm aware," he said, hanging up.

"Do we have Lucky Charms?" Holly asked, standing on her tiptoes to reach the cupboard. Mike retrieved the box from the top shelf and handed it to her. He got her a bowl. She insisted on pouring the milk and, without heeding his warnings, promptly spilled it everywhere.

"Holly!"

"Shit!" Holly yelled.

"Language!" Mike warned, trying and failing to suppress a laugh. He lunged across the counter for some paper towels and mopped up the spill. Holly dodged the puddle of milk on the floor and fled the kitchen. Mike tossed the paper towels in the garbage and put the milk in the fridge, mind elsewhere, and retreated to his room. His snatched the super com from his dresser.

"Lucas, you copy? Over," he said.

"Yeah, man, what's up?"

"I . . ." Mike paused, steeling himself. "It's El. She's super upset. I need your help, man."

"Oh god, what'd you do this time?"

"Please, just, how soon can you get here?"

A beat, a burst of static, then . . .

"I'll be there in five."

Exactly twelve minutes passed before Lucas barged through the front door, looking a bit disheveled, with Max in tow.

"You're late."

"Sorry we, er, got held up."

"Uh, please tell me you weren't doing what I think you were doing." Mike said, as they made their way down the basement steps. He eyed Max, whose braids had come a bit undone and Lucas, winded and a little worse for wear.

"What? No. No no no no _no_." Lucas said, waving his arms. "It's not what you think."

"We were at Dustin's, helping him make posters for the play," Max said. "He was being super annoying. I was _this close_ ," she measured out a millimeter of space between her thumb and forefinger, "to murdering him with kid's scissors."

"He was freaking out because Tommy Campbell's apparently got mono, you know, the guy that's supposed to play the Mad Hatter?"

Mike nodded.

"Well, James Grady is Tommy's understudy and he sucks ass, so Dustin's freaking out. He wouldn't shut up. I was losing my . . . what the hell?" Max blurted, grabbing Mike's hand, peering at his heavily bandaged palms.

"What happened?"

Her eyes traveled to his face, roving the bruises smeared across the left side of his forehead, a tapestry of blues and yellows and reds.

He snatched his hand away.

"Nothing. I fell off my bike yesterday in the rain. Some guy almost hit me with his car. I flipped over the handlebars."

"Holy shit, Mike, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

Max's brows knit in concern.

" _Really_ , I'm fine," Mike insisted.

Max looked at him like she didn't believe him and didn't want to let it go. She shifted her weight, eyeing his bruises.

"Wait, go on, Dustin was being annoying . . ."

" _So_ annoying."

"We had to get away. And you called and gave us the perfect excuse, so we bolted and here we are."

"Okay . . ." Mike said, slowly, "but that doesn't explain why you guys look like you just . . . you know what, forget I said anything. I don't want to know."

"We raced, on our bikes. That's all. Jesus," Max said, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah, it's _really_ windy out there," Lucas added.

"If you say so . . ." Mike said, brows skyrocketing. Lucas punched his shoulder.

"Gross. C'mon, man."

"Yeah, why don't you mind your own business? Oh, wait, 'cause you fucked everything up with El and now you've come crying to us. What did you do this time, Wheeler?"

"I didn't fuck everything up," Mike snapped. "I just . . . I got mad, that's all."

"Mad? At what?" Max asked, eyes narrowing.

Mike sighed.

"It's complicated." He shrugged, dragging a hand through his hair. Max folded her arms, cocking an eyebrow. He sighed, again.

"El thinks that Hopper is still alive. That the gate might still be open, and that he's stuck somewhere in between."

"Wait, hold up, what?" Lucas yelped.

Mike sighed, recounting everything El had told him. The dream and Hopper and the presence in Will's room and the episodes she'd been having. She'd only told him about two or three but he suspected there had been more. And she'd kept them from him. For what, to spare his feelings? To keep him from lying awake at night worrying about her, as if he didn't already?

"She didn't sound right, on the phone. I could tell she was tired and scared but there was something else, too. Something in her voice. Like, you know when it's the end of the world and there's monsters on our doorstep and she gets that look in her eye? Like she thinks she has to fix everything? Like it's her fault? And the only way she can fix it is to put her life on the line?"

"No."

"Yes," Lucas said.

Max cocked an eyebrow. "What?"

Lucas shook his head, looking at Mike. "Hate to break it to you, man, but she's got a serious hero complex."

"That's not her fault!" Mike says. "What do you expect, when everyone just sits around and waits for her to save the day?"

"Woah, not true. We don't just sit around. If we hadn't had those fireworks . . ." Lucas began.

"Oh my god, shut up about the fireworks already!" Max snapped, flicking him. She turned to Mike.

"El knows what she's getting herself into. She knows her limits, Mike, how many times do I have to tell you?" Max asked.

"How can you say that?" Mike snapped, glaring at Max, not quite believing that, after everything that had happened that night at Starcourt, after the Mind Flayer had lured El straight into a trap. After she'd pulled one of its tendrils from her own goddamn leg, after she'd almost _died_ , they could sit here and have the same argument.

"How can you say that when she pushes herself past the breaking point? When she literally collapses because she zapped so much energy? Her nosebleeds . . . what do you think those are, Max? My guess is as good as yours but I'm willing to bet a lot of money that it's the strain her powers put on her brain. It's causing her fucking brain damage and you guys sit there and make her spy on people and pass her tissues like her nosebleeds are just nosebleeds and she's just some toy you can use whenever you want. And don't try to tell me she knows her limits. You didn't see her that night, in the school. When she fought the demogorgon and turned to dust and disappeared, right in front of us. You weren't there!"

Mike slammed a fist on the coffee table, very aware of the tears stinging his eyes.

"Jeez, Mike, calm down." Lucas said, laying a hand on Mike's shoulder. He turned away, trying to hide the fact that he was crying and failing, miserably.

"You didn't see her face. You didn't see the look in her eyes. She was so ready to sacrifice herself and I . . . I just sat there and let it happen." His voice broke. He wiped his eyes, furious with himself for this display of weakness. Hating how badly his hands shook. Hating how upset he was, how ridiculous he sounded in his own head. "Forget it."

Max reached across the table and took his hand, face softening.

"What else did she say, on the phone?" She asked, gently.

"I asked her if the gate's still open. She says she doesn't know. She's convinced Hopper's alive, though, which brings me to the point I was trying to make," he said, gaze shifting between her and Lucas. "I think it's some kind of trap."

"A trap?" Max asked, skeptically, cocking an eyebrow.

"It's the Mind Flayer, setting a trap. It's trying to lure her out into the open. That was its main goal, remember? She's our dimension's best defender, and the only thing standing between it and world domination. It saw her as a threat and wanted to kill her."

Mike ran a hand through his hair and went on. "When El looked into Billy's head and saw his memories, the Mind Flayer was living in the dark parts of his mind. The wounded parts."

"Memories of Neil. Bad memories." Max added, looking pale.

"It feeds off pain and fear. I think, when it looks for a host, it looks for someone who's vulnerable. Someone who's been through a trauma. Like Will. He was suffering from PTSD when the Mind Flayer possessed him. And if that's true, and we know how much trauma El's been through . . ."

"Hopper's death . . . it's a fresh wound . . ." Lucas said, quietly. Mike nodded.

"I think her powers are linked to her emotions. She draws on anger to make her stronger, but the more emotional and angry she gets, the more out of control she becomes. The more energy she zaps. It could also explain why she lost her powers. That night, she suffered a trauma. She's still grieving. Maybe, somehow, that's affecting her powers, making them weaker.

It explains why sometimes her nose bleeds and sometimes it doesn't. The nosebleeds, and the strength of her powers, for that matter, are directly correlated with her emotional state."

Mike stood, pacing the room.

"It totally makes sense. It's feeding off her trauma. It knows she'll go looking for Hopper." He bit his lip, stomach sinking through the floor. "It's targeting her weakest point."

"I swear, if this is part of your whole 'women act on emotion and not logic' bullshit . . ."

"That's not what I meant," Mike said, "I'm just trying to figure out what kind of trap the Mind Flayer's setting, okay? I'm not attacking women, if that's what you think, Max. I haven't sunk that low . . ."

"Alright, fine. But I still think you're falling down a rabbit hole, here. We don't even know if this thing's still out there. It's probably dead. It looked pretty dead to me."

"Do you really believe that?" Mike asked. "We don't know what we're dealing with. And neither does she, which is why I think it's really stupid for her to be looking for Hopper in the void or whatever it is . . ."

"El's not stupid, Mike, she wouldn't put herself in danger like that."

Mike glared at her.

"Look me in the eye and tell me, with a straight face, that you don't think she'd put herself in danger if it meant potentially getting Hopper back," he said, fighting to keep his voice steady. "Tell me you don't think she'd put herself in danger for any one of us."

Max frowned.

"She would," Mike went on. "She already has. On multiple occasions. And I've heard her over the phone and I can tell how _hopeful_ she is, how ready she is to believe that Hopper's alive, that he's trying to contact her from the void or some shit like that."

"Well, how do we know he isn't trying to contact her from the void? I mean, they didn't find a body . . ."

"What? No! It just doesn't make sense. It's impossible. And she won't listen to me, and she's gonna do something stupid and dangerous and I . . . I can't lose her again. I can't." Mike buried his face in his hands. "And it kills me, everyday, that I can't see her face. That I don't know when she's hurting or scared or in trouble." He groaned. " _What am I gonna do?"_

"Well, first, you're gonna call her and you're going to apologize." Max said.

"I tried. No one's picking up."

"Ouch, the silent treatment," Lucas said, sympathetically. "That's rough."

"Jeez, Wheeler, what did you say to her?"

Mike grimaced.

"A lot of stupid shit, okay? Look, I'm not proud of it. Obviously. Which is why I'm trying to fix it, so can you please just give me some actual advice instead of sitting there judging me in my moment of weakness? _Please_."

"Okay, okay . . ." Max said, crossing the room to sit next to Mike on the sofa.

"You're gonna call her and if she doesn't answer you're going to leave a message and you're going to spill your guts and tell her you're sorry and that you fucked up and you're an asshole. She won't be able to ignore it, and she'll have time to decide how she wants to respond. And if I know El, and I _know_ El, she can't stay mad at you for long. Last summer, when she dumped you, I could tell she didn't feel good about it."

"Then why did she do it?" Mike said, frowning.

Max laughed uneasily. "That whole mess may have been partly . . ." She shifted in her seat, squirming under his gaze. "It may have been due to a bit of orchestration on my part, but that's not the point," she added, quickly, as Mike's brows shot up and his mouth fell open. "The point is, you're sorry and you need to let her know you're sorry."

"I _knew_ you were conspiring against me," Mike hissed, shooting daggers at Max.

"Not _conspiring_ , I was . . . guiding her. I was just trying to teach her how to be her own person. She needed that, Mike. She needed space to breathe, and to figure out who she is."

"And to do that she needed to _dump_ me?"

"Oh my god, will you quit acting like a kicked puppy? Not everything in life is some big ploy against you, Mike. Jesus."

"You told her to dump me!"

"Indirectly."

"So?"

"Like I said, she needed space. And if that meant dumping your ass for like, what, seventy-two hours, then so be it. It obviously wasn't a big deal and you guys obviously worked it out. And you're both better people because of it, so, really, you should be thanking me."

"Not a big deal? Not a big deal? You know what, Max? Here's what you don't get. It _was_ a big deal. It was. To me, anyway."

"And I recognize that now and I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry." Max folded her arms, brows knitting.

"Apology _not_ accepted."

"Dipshit."

"Asshole."

"Alright, enough." Lucas said. He turned to Mike. "Are you going to call her, or what?" He prodded Mike's chest. " _Call her already._ "

Mike got up and went to the phone. He dialed the first couple digits and stopped, heart fluttering in his chest like a trapped bird.

"Er, we'll give you some privacy," Lucas muttered, quickly, seizing Max's hand. He led her up the stairs. Mike dialed the rest of the number and took a breath, closing his eyes. Joyce answered on the third ring.

"Mrs. Byers, hi."

"Hey, Mike."

"Hi, um, is . . . is El there?"

"I think she and the boys are out back, hold on."

Mike waited, fingers drumming an irregular beat on the receiver, heart racing. After an eternity, Joyce spoke.

"She can't come to the phone right now, hon, can I take a message?"

"Are you sure? It's really important. I really need to talk to her."

"I'll have her call you back."

"Yeah, okay, just, could you please tell her that I'm sorry and I really need to talk to her?"

"Sure, sweetie."

"Thanks, uh, bye." He hung up, and leaned against the wall, blowing out a breath. Lucas descended the stairs, leaning on the rail.

"So? How'd it go?"

"It was Will's mom." Mike said, massaging his temples. "El 'can't come to the phone,' whatever that means."

"Oof."

Lucas crossed the room. Mike looked at him, grimacing.

"It's bad, huh?"

Lucas sighed, clapping Mike's shoulder.

"It's bad," he said, nodding. "But I've fucked up worse. What can I say? They always come crawling back."

"Um, excuse me?"

Max appeared on the bottom step, hands on her hips.

"Uh, I said that I won you back by, er, owning up to my mistakes and admitting that I'm a huge douche bag?" Lucas phrased it like a question, looking scared. Max cocked an eyebrow.

"Is that right?"

"Um. . . yes?" Lucas squeaked. Max cracked a grin.

"I'm _teasing_ , Stalker. I mean, you are a douche bag, but you're a pretty decent one. As far as douche bags go, I mean."

"Thanks?"

Max laughed, kissing his cheek.

"Ugh, you guys are making me sick. Like, I literally might puke," Mike said, groaning.

"Says you. You and El made out in front of us all the time. You guys were practically facehuggers from _Alien_ , it was disgusting. It looked like you were eating each other."

"Oh my god, can we please not talk about that," Lucas whined. "Oh, god, I just got an image . . ."

Max grabbed hand, tugging him toward the stairs. "C'mon, I'm tired of rotting in this basement talking about Mike's love life. Let's go do something like kind of normal for once instead of worrying about monsters and interdimensional crap."

"We could go to the arcade?"

"Hell yes. If the world's gonna end then at least let me beat my high score. It'll be my swan song."

"I thought Peter Bishop beat your high score," Lucas said.

Max shoved his shoulder. "That was _one_ time, and I won it back."

Lucas scoffed. Max smacked him.

"What's the matter, Sinclair? Can't handle my mad skills?"

"I didn't say anything!"

"You were thinking something," she said, fiddling with the end of her braid.

"I can't believe this. The Mind Flayer might still be out there and you guys want to play video games."

"What do you want to do, Mike? Invite it to lunch?"

He opened his mouth, closed it again.

"We could be doing _something_ useful. We need to be sure that more Russian spies aren't down there trying to open another gate."

"The gate's closed, Mike. El said so herself. Honestly, Mike, you're a little paranoid. And I mean that in the nicest way possible."

Mike looked at her, noted the colorlessness of her cheeks, the shadows in her eyes, and couldn't bring himself to stop pushing back. Because, God forbid, he actually stopped being an insensitive little shit and got it through his head that Max had lost someone, too. That she was still processing and grieving and this topic of conversation hit just a little too close to home. Of course she wouldn't let herself entertain the idea that more interdimensional monsters lurked in the shadows because _how could it get any worse than this?_

"I have a right to be paranoid! We almost died! Multiple times! And your biggest worry is keeping a high score on a stupid game? Are you serious?"

"My biggest worry, Michael, is actually having fun for once. It's called being normal. If the world is ending and we're all going to die, I would like to spend whatever indeterminate amount of time I have left at the arcade, playing Dig Dug and contemplating the inevitability of oblivion. And I would like to do it without your snide remarks, _Michael_."

Lucas cleared his throat. "While you ladies are arguing, I'm gonna raid the kitchen for snacks," he said, making for the stairs. "And then I'm going to the arcade. Come or don't, I don't care, just _please_ stop fighting. _Jeez-us,_ I can't even hear myself think."

Max jumped up, following him. She paused on the steps.

"You coming, dipshit?" she called.

When Mike didn't answer, she shrugged, disappearing up the basement steps, a streak of flaming hair, a comet's tail, Mike stared across the room, stock-still, heart beating in his throat. There, near the sofa, a lamp had begun to flicker.


	5. Castle Byers

El sat in the front seat of the old pickup truck Jonathan had borrowed from someone at work, squished between him and Will. Jonathan had the windows rolled down and El wrinkled her nose against the scent of diesel fuel and manure as the pickup trundled along, belching exhaust, as miles and miles of farmland rushed past on either side of them. Will leaned forward, fiddling with the knobs and dials on the radio in an unsuccessful search for a station that wasn't ninety percent static. El gave the radio a telekinetic nudge, trying to boost the signal, but it did nothing except make her feel lightheaded, so she stopped.

"Check the glove compartment," Jonathan yelled over the rush of the wind and fragments of the local newscaster's weather report, interrupted by bursts of static.

"We're reporting an oncoming . . . cloudy . . . ahead . . . inches of . . ."

Will fished a cassette tape from the scraps of paper and cigarettes and old ketchup packets in the console.

"Ugh, Kenny Rogers," he remarked, with a grimace, and tossed it back in the compartment.

Jonathan groaned.

"Kenny Rogers?" El asked, puzzled.

"He's this super lame country singer. You wouldn't like him," Will explained, "trust me."

"We're here," Jonathan said, pulling into a large, gravel lot. El peered at the large sign with the words Penshaw Scrap Yard painted in red lettering. Jonathan put the truck in park and got out, El in tow.

They spent the afternoon loading supplies for Castle Byers 2.0 into the back of the pickup. El helped Jonathan haul a bunch of two-by-twelve plywood boards across the scrap yard. The day was cloudy and oddly warm for November, and soon El's shirt was sticking to her with sweat from the effort of hauling those boards across the dusty yard. She paused, wiping her grimy hands on the flannel—one of Hopper's old ones—she wore, allowing her gaze to wander across the yard. She watched the cranes and machinery lifting piles of scrap metal and clearing pathways, thoughts running away from her, and caught sight of Will struggling to carry large piece of tin roofing. She rushed to help him.

"Thanks," he said, sheepishly. "I thought it'd be useful, you know, to keep the rain off."

"It's perfect," she said, and together they dragged it across the yard.

Jonathan observed their growing pile of wood and scrap metal in the truck.

"You think this'll do?" He asked. Will nodded, cracking a grin.

"Oh, yeah," he said, with a grin. "This'll do."

On the way home, Will found a half-decent radio station playing some poppy love song by The Cure and sung along, coaxing El into joining in. She messed up all the words but she didn't care, and they were breathless and laughing by the time they pulled into the parking lot of a Dairy Queen for burgers and milkshakes.

El dipped her fries in her shake like Hop used to, feeling happy and full for once. Not thinking about the dream she'd had, ignoring Will's eyes on her, which perhaps lingered on her a little too long, watching her like she was something fragile and prone to breakage. His eyes asked her questions she didn't have the answer to. Sometimes he forgot to worry about her. Sometimes he cracked one of his rare smiles, and that was enough. For once, she felt like she was in the right place, and maybe that didn't make a lot of sense but she didn't care. This, she thought, with a smile, this feels like home. Maybe Joyce was right. Maybe this was home. Not a house or a building or a fort built from scraps of plywood, but a feeling. A family.

Thunder clapped warningly across the distant sky as Jonathan pulled into the driveway. They hauled the plywood to a clearing in the backyard, by the lake. Jonathan retrieved a hammer and nails out of the toolshed and Will pulled a crinkled slip of paper out of his pocket and smoothed it over his knee. It contained careful drawings and blueprints, with arrows and notes and measurements printed in Will's neat handwriting.

They hadn't made much progress before the sky opened up and began to downpour. Will seized El's hand and they ran for the cover of the back porch, pulling their hoods up over their heads as they sprinted across the grass. For one, heart-stopoing moment she thought she saw him standing there, with the rain falling in sheets and blurring her vision. He stood there, stubble on his jaw and blood on his shirt, across the yard.

Hop.

She stopped, letting go of Will's hand, stomach sinking to the ground. She blinked, wiping the rainwater from her eyes, and he was gone. A burst of lightning split the sky in half.

"El, you okay?" Will called, over the rumble of thunder.

She looked at him, trying to gather her bearings, heart in her throat.

"I'm fine." She said, returning her gaze to a clump of shrubbery by the dock, where she thought she'd seen . . . but, no, that was impossible, or so she tried to tell herself, Mike's words echoing in her ears.

It was just some stupid dream, El! Hopper's gone. He's gone!

She ducked her head and joined Will under the porch, brushing a strand of wet hair from her eyes. Will touched her shoulder and she started, still half in her own thoughts, rainwater sluicing down her back and clinging to her eyelashes.

"You're sure? You're white as a sheet . . . "

El looked at him, blinking, and it wasn't Will in front of her but Mike, squeezing her hand, leaning down to whisper in her ear, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

"El, you're white as a sheet. Are you okay? Do you need to sit down?"

They'd been at Hop's funeral. She'd watched them lower the casket it into the ground. She'd tucked a pack of Marlboro Reds in the clump of lilies adorning the smooth, mahogany surface of the casket and tried to say goodbye. Her lips moved, and no sound came out, and Mike squeezed her hand and Joyce kissed her hair, and everything hurt but she couldn't bring herself to do anything but sit and stare, insubstantial as a ghost and just as pale, running her thumb up and down Sarah's bracelet. She tried not to think about the absence of the body. How he'd been obliterated and turned to dust by the explosion. How he was just gone . . . because thinking about it meant acknowledging it, and she just wanted this to be over. She just wanted to go home.

Afterwards, Joyce hosted a reception at her house. It was a small affair. A table with snacks and drinks had been set up in the backyard. The party was there, and the Wheelers and Cal and Powell and other familiar faces from the station. She'd spent enough time there to recognize them and attach name to face. Hop used to bring her in on days when he had paperwork to catch up on, when he didn't want to leave her alone with Mike and no one to enforce the three-inch minimum. She'd sit in the cramped little office where he worked and go through all the crap in his desk drawers. She'd read or doodle on the edges of discarded paper or work on the crosswords Flo gave her. She'd ask for "an eight-letter word for knighthood or knightly qualities", he'd grumble and say, "fuck if I know, kid, you're too smart for me" and muss her hair and smile a rare smile.

Sometimes she played cards with Powell and solved puzzles with Flo and listened to Cal and Steele and Patterson crack jokes in the break room. Cal always bought her a Coke from the vending machine and she'd sip from it, the carbonation tickling the roof of her mouth, feeling full and happy and marveling at how some things still felt so novel.

Like clockwork, Hop would always work himself into a frenzy and storm out, all reddened face and rough voice, and El would trail behind him as he walked around the block and smoked a cigarette until all the stress worked its way out of his system. She'd hold his hand, and pick dandelions that sprouted from the cracks in the concrete, and they'd get lunch at a diner on the street corner.

She liked it at the station. She liked the quiet moments they'd spent in that cramped little office that smelled like coffee and smoke and everything familiar. Maybe she didn't appreciate it then but she appreciated it now, and couldn't help but wish for more. One more day. One more crossword. One more cigarette. One more goodbye.

There were unfamiliar faces at the funeral, too. A pretty woman with blond, curly hair and sad eyes, who approached El and introduced herself as Diane. El shook her hand, and the woman didn't say anything for a moment, searching El's face with a funny look about her, eyes unfocused, corners of her mouth pulled tight. Somewhere else. Diane had given her head a shake, as if coming out of a reverie, and dropped El's hand as if it had burned her.

"Sorry . . . I . . . I'm sorry, I have to go," she stammered, leaving El to stare after her, a little taken aback. She wondered how Diane had known Jim. If she was a distant relative or a friend. El stared at the woman's back, black cardigan pulled tight around her thin shoulders, hurrying across the lawn. She tried to put the woman out of her mind without much luck, because the strange look in Diane's eyes seemed to be burned into the backs of her eyelids. And the way she'd gripped El's hand, tight enough to hurt, it was just . . . strange. She turned, fixing her attention on the numerous guests milling around Joyce's backyard, trying to commit their faces to memory.

How had they known him? Had they known him like she did? Had they seen him cry, like she'd seen him cry? Had they seen those walls come down? Had they known what kind of cigarettes he smoked, what T.V. shows he liked and how his laugh sounded, so big and deep and rumbling it filled everything up. Did they know what he smelled like, what his hands felt like cupped around her small ones, with their calluses and wrinkles and scars, rubbing her knuckles because her hands were always cold and he liked to tease her about it, mumbling something about "bad circulation, my crazy Aunt Dorothy had it, too." Did they know he snored when he fell asleep on the couch? Did they know what color his eyes were, how sometimes they swam with shadows when he got caught up in his own thoughts, until her hand in his called him back? Did they know he rubbed his bottom lip with his thumb when he was stressed, and it split in the winter from all the times he'd worried it with his fingernail? Did they know when he held her hand his fingers always fiddled with the blue band on her wrist, the one he'd given her. The one that belonged to Sarah. Did they know it took him a year to work up the courage to call her his daughter, and it took her longer to finally call him Dad? And when she did there were tears in his eyes that he'd tried to hide?

She hadn't had much time with him but she had these things, these memories, and she didn't know if that made her feel better or worse. They'd had one year, six months, and nine days. She knew. She counted. And all of these numbers got bogged up in her head and she started to feel dizzy, and then her head began to hurt because she knew she was going to cry and didn't want to. Not here, not in front of all these strangers. That's when Mike took her hand and gave it a squeeze, and the numbers and the faces and the quizzical looks disappeared, and it was just the two of them. He was the only thing in the world that mattered, and when he asked her if she needed to sit down, she'd nodded, holding onto his hand so tightly all the blood left it, but he didn't seem to mind. He wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders, and led her back to the house.

Someone shook El's arm, jolting her from her thoughts. Will was holding her by the shoulders, looking worried.

"El? Did you hear me? We should get inside, you're gonna catch a cold." Will wrapped an arm around her shoulders and led her toward the door. She peeled off her raincoat and muddied Chuck Taylors and left them by the back porch. She could feel Will's eyes on her, waiting for her to fall apart.

She made toward the bathroom and locked the door behind her, hands gripping the edge of the sink, she stared at her reflection in the mirror, timing her breath, trying to ground herself. She squeezed her eyes shut, telling herself to calm down, to pull herself together, but it did nothing to slow the throb of her heart in her temples and the trembling of her fingers.

She opened her eyes and found herself on the floor, flat on her back. The lights above bathed her aggressively artificial light. El pushed herself up on her elbows, squinting in the brightness, and got to her feet.

She couldn't hear anything but her own breathing and a low humming in her ears. That same low frequency vibration, rebounding in the tight space. The lights began to flicker, almost lazily, and El whipped around, eyes landing on the eerie glow of the porcelain sink and the toilet seat and the white tile, so like the sterile, white tiled floors in the lab. She hadn't noticed them until now.

She turned, slowly, and peered into the mirror. Her breath snagged in her throat. There, staring back at her, was Kali.

Kali's brown eyes seemed to stare straight through her. El held her breath, reaching out to touch the mirror. She half expected her hand to go straight through it, but she felt nothing but the cool surface of the glass.

"Kali?" she asked, tentatively. "Can you hear me?"

Kali's brows twitched, eyes widening. She'd seen El. Kali opened her mouth to say something. Before she could, her edges began to grow fuzzy. She faded away into a puff of smoke. El's stomach dropped, insides turning to jelly as all sense of gravity and equilibrium faded away and she dropped back into her body. She wound up on her hands and knees on the bathroom floor, gasping for air, tears in her eyes.

Will pounded on the door, and El wondered how long he'd been at it, if she'd been screaming . . .

"El, you okay?" he called, sounding panicked.

"Yeah." She got to her feet. "I'm fine," she said, feeling anything but. She stared at the mirror, but it held nothing but her reflection. El reached out, fingertips brushing the surface, mind buzzing with questions for the lost sister standing on the other side.


End file.
